https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/29/streaming-media-company-plex-raises-new-funds-as-it-nears-profitability/
Media streamer Plex has raised new capital. The company, which began as a media organization startup, has morphed over the years to become a one-stop shop
I hope this doesn't mean they are on the slippery slope of selling user data, thoughts?
Honestly the writing's been on the wall for Plex for a while now. I think it was when they introduced podcasts or news or something that it first became clear to me that Plex was trying to grow beyond a software company for self-hosters and prepare themselves for an IPO or something. I still use it simply because their client availability is second-to-none and I've got a bunch of people signed up already, but I've already made my peace that the "Plex getting shittier" line and the "Jellyfin getting better" line are getting closer and closer to crossing each other.
What's your hosting solution for external access? I'm asking because right now, Plex has a lot going for it in terms of allowing me to securely host my own server and share it with the people I want who are outside my network without actually having to open up ports or compromise my network security in any way. I couldn't imagine hosting costs on a cloud VM for a decently sized, fairly actively used media server, assuming you wanted to go that route. I guess you could set up a reverse proxy on a cloud VM and forward traffic into your local network, but then there's still the added network traffic costs for your VM.
I think a lot of people use Tailscale and add their external clients to a dedicated tailnet. How are you hosting Plex without opening any ports though?
I think they use Plex Relay which is also limited bandwidth since it uses Plex's servers.
I actually do both. Friends and family who are on the plex aren't on the tailscale network. But my personal clients are. I mean, not all of them. You obviously can't add a Roku stick or a smart TV to a tailscale network. Not trivially, of course. Maybe you could custom engineer a solution, but it might not be worth the effort. As I said in a previous comment, though, the best solution might be a dedicated cloud VM that serves as a reverse proxy into your network and which forwards traffic - either by having them both on the same tailnet and one just forwards traffic on specific ports, specifically plex's - or a reverse SSH tunnel. If I had to do it, I'd probably go the first route. Still, the network traffic costs might make doing that prohibitive. But it also might not. I haven't looked into it.
The best solution requires a bit of technical ability: reverse proxy. Things like Nginx Proxy Manager are really not that hard to use, especially on something like unraid but requires a bit of infrastructure and time to setup. The advantage of this is you can then get into the world of self hosting and do stuff like file sync (seafile), password manager (bitwarden), etc. The list is endless once you have a reverse proxy setup.
The easiest way however is to use tailscale to setup a VPN and access it via local IP address.
Sure, but the VPN alone is only a partial solution - if your computer is on the same tailscale VPN as your plex server, you can create a peer to peer connection without plex pass. But for third party apps - like a smart TV or a Roku or whatever - those don't have tailscale clients and they probably never will. Which means you would have to produce some kind of extra solution, like utilizing a raspberry pi or other portable micro pc that can bind to the tailscale network but also project video to the television. Which is very clunky. Right now, I feel like there is no drop in replacement for Plex if you want to share you server with friends or family while also maximizing your own security and keeping self-hosting costs to a "minimum."
Swiftfin is iOS/tvOS and it’s still early stages and needs a lot of work. Infuse on iOS/tvOS works better but is a paid app to play all but the most basic formats.
The Roku app, from my experience, is the best client for Jellyfin. But if you’re an Apple household I recommend looking at Infuse.
I think they may have dropped the feature but I distinctly remember being disappointed in the feature that it wouldn’t download MP3s to your server so I’m pretty sure it existed at one point.
Ah got it, I kinda also remember it, but never cared too much about it since I was well served with Pocket Cast (sadly the free crippled version of it lol).
At the moment all is fine. I'm just going to ride with it until I have to stop and change to something else.
I'm mostly in the same boat. So far anything I didn't like could be easily turned off. I unpinned the Plex TV and movies so it never shows up. I don't mind discover because it means it returns results for things I don't have, letting me watchlist it so overseerr can request it without me needing to leave Plex.
I have a jellyfin container running in the same docker compose yml with the exact same media folders mounted to it with quicksync passed through to it in addition to Plex, reverse proxy already set up so switching is as easy as opening a different URL or app since it's already up and running.
You know what would be a killer feature?
Being able to buy movies without DRM crap at full resolution (blu-ray or 4k HDR) at a reasonable price (same or less than physical media) that includes extras. Extra points if everything is already named and in the correct folder layout to just drop it on the server in the right folder. Extra Extra points if Plex manages the download in the background and puts it in the right place when finished, or an incoming folder that awaits approval. Even several hours or more to download it would be fine (just make download resumable).
(yes I know this is exceedingly unlikely to happen, but we can dream)
I had to drop Plex when it made me sign in for a locally hosted setup. I'd rather not have them in my library.
Replaced with Jellyfin as others here have, found every device in the house so far works with it and it streamed 4k to the TV from an RPI 4.
That is only true when you use their "home" feature. It puts the entire thing behind oauth because it has to do so in order to restrict libraries/content to non-full users. Think about the instance where you have a thirteen-year-old kid and you want to restrict them to pg13 and under. Without forcing oauth on local connections they could just sign out and watch all your star trek porn parodies or whatever you don't want them to see. If you remove the server from a "plex home", it disables the oauth workflow for local connections as expected.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not really happy with a lot of their new sharing/social features, and their recommendations on the homepage can fuck right off, but I do think it's important to be accurate when criticizing. Requiring oauth on local vlans when plex home is enabled is the objectively correct solution.
How about transcoding subtitles on those 4k titles? That's where I find Plex is a bit worse for wear right now in my environment.
I use bazarr to automatically grab subtitles in .srt because VOBSUB cannot be trusted.
That pretty much solves any subtitle related issues.
What's not to trust with VobSub? They are always in sync, unlike a lot of Bazarr fetched subtitles. Of course, only play VobSub on devices that can direct play them.
The main problem for me is their poor device support but VOBSUB has other problems like poor text scaling and ugly text. I think the last two problems are because VOBSUB is raster based instead of text based.
Bazarr subs can have problems but those are mostly mitigated by automatically time shifting all but the very perfect sub matches. Adding more tags to files from radarr/sonarr probably helps with matching as well.
As soon as they pulled this I switched to Jellyfin. No regrets.
Plex is yet another service on the enshitification high road, might aswell switch to Jellyfin now and spare the future trouble if you ask me.
“One of the things we’ve already started to prove in 2023 is that we can absolutely monetize some of that data…in a very privacy-friendly way. There’s no personally identifiable information being used,” Valroy said. “We already proved we could make money on that this year, so, in 2024, we’re putting more wood behind that arrow. And arguably, even though our current business is already growing 30%-40% per year, that could dwarf it in two to three years. That is a really big market opportunity,” he added.
Sounds like they already have, on that note, for me it no longer matters if they are or aren't as long as they put dev time into features that'll actually create value for me as well.
That makes me nervous. We keep seeing evidence, again and again, that "anonymized" data is actually pretty easy to de-anonymize if you have enough of it. So I'm really not a fan of companies selling "anonymized" user data unless they transparently specify EXACTLY what data they're selling.
I'll stick with Plex for now because it's so easy for others to use, but the moment I smell smoke, I'm heading for the door. I've already got Jellyfin installed and connected to my library, I just haven't bothered to set up a reverse proxy for remote access yet.
Yeah I don’t like it. Gonna ride this out for now like some of the other people here but I suspect I’ll be moving onto Jellyfin in the next few years.
I most likely will eventually, but Plex works great for me for the time being and I've already paid for Plex Pass so I wanna get some mileage out of it.
Does Jellyfin have:
A dedicated music app?
Music filtering/smart playlists?
Sonic analysis for music?
Good 4k/x265 performance?
Has a third party (or built in) utility that shows me streaming usage per person?
Allows me to limit remote users to streaming from a single IP address at a time?
Let’s me watch something together with another remote user?
Has an app for most any device (like Plex or Emby) that does NOT require sideloading?
Built in native DVR steaming/recording support?
Built in two factor authentication?
You're mileage is going to vary based on if you're running off the server's web interface or from a client. The Roku client has made some amazing improvements and I'm thankful for those devs, but it's still behind the Android version in terms of features.
For music on Android, as an example, Gelli, Finamp, and Fintunes are all music focused clients.
Lastly, you can run both Plex and Jellyfin off the same library. Give it a try, see how you like it without giving up Plex. I ran them in tandem for about six months because making the jump.
I’ve run both Plex and Jellyfin and found Jellyfin features lacking compared to Plex.
Hence the multiple questions to see if JF has gotten any better.
The Roku client has made some amazing improvements and I’m thankful for those devs, but it’s still behind the Android version in terms of features.
Any features in particular you find yourself missing?
For context, I run Jellyfin on a box at home that serves 3 Rokus and a family of 4. I also run Jellyfin at work, a small school, where it feeds 18 Rokus in wide variety of use cases.
There are two features on my wishlist that are available on Android but not yet Roku.
The first would be the ability to shuffle a playlist. I loved that shuffle was added episodes a while back.
Don't shame me for wanting to watch things in a random order. /s
The second would be the ability to search for subtitles. I love the new subtitles interface. It would be the cherry on top to be able to search for a missing subtitle without bouncing over to a separate devices.
I know that's a whole other kind of request, given the use of the open subtitles plugin.
Thank you for all you do!
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
The first would be the ability to shuffle a playlist. I loved that shuffle was added episodes a while back.
This is possible today with the current release.
Click on your Playlist library. Then, on the grid of Playlists, highlight the one you want and instead of pressing "OK" press "Play" on your remote. It'll shuffle play the highlighted playlist.
For the subtitle one, I'm unsure what capabilities the API offers us and what functionality Roku would support, but it's at least worth taking a look and seeing what's possible.
I would have never stumbled upon playlist shuffling by myself. Wow! You have no idea how much you just made my day! Thank you!
I'm already on my way out of Plex to Jellyfin.
I had a nice run with my lifetime pass, but the road ahead has been very clear the last couple of years of where Plex is headed.
After they purger all the pirate shares, their clock is ticking.
Soon they'll have no data and no customers. These tools come and go and the community will migrate while they continue their profitable enshitification.
Well, I look forward to having to switch to something else when inevitably someone at Plex says "if we just monetized traffic for home servers we'd be able to make so much money"
I mean, people were using it for blatant in-your-face piracy.
Plex has always been about under-the-radar privacy so they have plausible deniability.